Reply to How are SLACs easier to navigate relative to big state schools?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]SLACs don't have graduate students, so undergrads have more opportunities to do research with faculty.[/quote]

This is a very big point for SLACS for kids who have an interest in grad school or research-based fields like the social sciences.  Yes, other schools have undergrad research programs, but the undergrads are typically the only game in town for faculty. And faculty at SLACs are research-active.  Plus there are virtually no adjuncts or grad students teaching at a SLAC so every class you take is a chance to click with a faculty member that you could join their research work.[/quote]

At a big school, I had one adjunct and one TA over four years. It depends on the courses you choose. [/quote]

Yes, but every prof you took a class with probably didn't exclusively have undergrads as their research assistants.  That's the difference I was talking about--every class is a potential connection with faculty projects in a more realistic way than at a larger school with graduate programs.  (I'm a prof who has taught at both--when I was at a SLAC I was looking at every class seeing who might be interested in working on research, encouraging undergrads to think about it, hiring them for all the varied roles.  At a research university, I'm always having to make sure I have enough funding for my doc students, that they have opportunities to teach and that I'm on top of finding avenues for my MS students to have independent lines of research in my projects.  I value undergrad research so I make sure there's always an undergrad in the lab but they are much less integral just because grad students have to come first for research opportunities since that's their main focus.   [/quote]

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